Harry Potter and the Existential Crisis
by i-write-things-sometimes
Summary: Harry Potter finds out that he's a fictional character, and emotions ensue. Eventually, he realizes that maybe he isn't so worthless after all. Mild profanity and light angst, but nothing really over the top. Highly philosophical, if that's your jive. Definitely made for those who believe that Harry Potter is more than just a book series.
1. Chapter 1

I'm Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

Well, I guess that's incorrect now. Because I guess I never _really_ lived.

I'm fictional.

Made-up. Non-existing. Fake.

Draco Malfoy, who still diligently remains my relentless tormentor since childhood, sneers in triumph and throws the book at my feet.

He broke my nose once. That's the kind of kid we're dealing with here. Well, the word "kid" isn't so accurate.

He's freaking seventeen.

The tome slams into my feet hard, but I resist the urge to wince. Malfoy grins coldly.

"How does it feel, Potter? To know that you're a puppet, a sham? Nothing but a mere _figment of imagination_?" He advances closer until he's almost stepping on my toes and leans into my face. His eyes glint maliciously, and his mouth just starts to curve unpleasantly upward again when I open my mouth.

"Huh. I didn't know our relationship was _that_ close, Malfoy. I thought our faces would never find occasion to be this close together, but I suppose I'm wrong. Would you like some tongue with your kiss?"

He reels backward so quickly that he almost falls over, and I use this as proof to calm my pounding heart. _I_ just said that. I thought the words, and then I spoke them of my own free will.

I'm not fictional.

I can't be.

Malfoy's lying. He's just trying to get a reaction out of me, the stupid little git. And I, idiot that I am, actually believed him for just a few seconds.

Not anymore.

Malfoy brushes back his white-blond hair fiercely with one hand and snaps, "I wouldn't be so funny if I were you, _Potter_. If I were you, I'd be thinking over every _wonderful_ thing I have ever accomplished and realizing the fact that I. Didn't. Do. Any. Of. It. At. All." He enunciates each word perfectly, saying them in little staccato bursts.

Shaking my head, I turn around and start walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. "I'm done, Malfoy."

His voice rises, but I neither stop walking nor turn around. "You think I'm lying, do you, Potter?" He stays where he's standing, but a slide followed by a nearby _thud_ tells me that he's just kicked the book down the hall after me. "You think I made up some wild story, paid a printer to make that book, and planted it somewhere so you could find it?" His voice climbs almost to a shriek as I distance myself even further from him. "You think I have _time_ for such childish ruses?"

"I didn't even know that word was in your vocabulary, Malfoy," I call over my shoulder. "Where'd you learn it?"

Suddenly, Malfoy shouts out a single word, and as it registers in my brain I abruptly drop to the ground, narrowly missing a spell shot at where my head had been.

A few moments later, Malfoy has caught up behind me, and his cold voice throws the words down as I roll over to look up at him. "You are _fictional_, Potter. _I'm_ fictional. Everyone in this stupid _goddamn world_ is _made-up_. Do you _get it_, or would you like me to repeat it more _slowly_?"

Still lying on the ground, I plunge my hand into my robes and grasp my wand, just in case I need to defend myself. The action turns out to be unnecessary as Malfoy suddenly cocks his head, listening. A moment later, he stows the wand he has been pointing at me back into his robes and begins to leave me, heading the opposite direction down the hallway.

He abruptly stops a few steps later. "What does it matter what I even do anymore?" he mutters without turning around. He pauses. "I'm not even_ real_."

I tense again, expecting Malfoy to whip around and cast the killing curse at my forehead or break my nose for the second time, but then he picks up his feet again and disappears down the hall.

Sighing, I peel myself off the ground and brush the dirt off my robes. Turning around again I almost continue my previous path down the hallway, but then I hesitate, and two seconds later I'm bending down to pick up the book that Malfoy had thrown at me a few minutes earlier.

_Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_. Having found it a few days earlier, I've flipped through the entire thing, and it's an entirely-accurate-to-the-detail account of my first year at Hogwarts, including every single thought and emotion that I ever had along the way.

By J.K. Rowling.

Turning it over, I read the back summary again, trying to unearth any telltale clues. I live in a wizarding world, for God's sake. Anything is possible. Maybe some witch or wizard out there has a spell or a magical object that lets them look into people's minds, and after discovering a way to look into _mine_, they decided to write a biography of the famous Harry Potter.

I almost convince myself that it is indeed just a harmless biography when my eyes snag on a particular sentence, and my heart jolts.

"Rowling uses classic narrative devices with flair and originality and delivers a complex and demanding plot in the form of a hugely entertaining thriller. She is a first-rate writer for children."

And just a line under that: "A richly textured first novel given lift-off by an inventive wit."

"Narrative devices"?

"Hugely entertaining thriller"?

"Plot"?

..."_Novel"_?

My life has been invented, planned out, and written down? I'm just a character in a book?

I'm...fake?

_God._ I shake my head in disgust at myself. I'm _seventeen_. Not only that, I'm Harry freaking Potter. I've fought dragons, faced Voldemort numerous times, battled dark wizards by the dozens, and yet I was still susceptible to the simple lies of a bully. Malfoy was the one who had this planned out. He created some stupid book with fake information so he could scare me and laugh about it later.

In fact, the way I found this book was pretty dodgy in the first place. Just casually slipped into my book bag. One minute it wasn't there, and the next minute it was.

Malfoy. Such an idiot. Even after the second war against Voldemort, even after the Battle of Hogwarts, even after we've all witnessed death and sacrifice and torture, my childhood bully still invests his time in silly little psychological pranks as this.

Idiot.


	2. Chapter 2

I grab him by the back of the robes and drag him backwards off the bench, forcing him to stand. "Alright Malfoy, you've had your fun, leave me _alone_, you stupid-"

He jerks himself away and glares at me. "What the HELL are you talking-"

"Stop TOUCHING MY BAG, stop SLIPPING BOOKS INTO IT, stop MESSING WITH ME, stop REMINDING ME that IDIOTIC GITS LIKE YOU LIVE while GOOD AND NOBLE PEOPLE DIE-"

Despite the curious looks given by others sitting in the Great Hall, Malfoy continues to feed the argument. "I didn't DO anything, Potter, you idiot!" His hand reaches into his robes for his wand, and I instinctively reach into my own robes for mine.

Completely past the point of what people thought of me, I pull my wand out and point it at his chest. "Just recently surviving a war not good enough for you, Malfoy? Thought you might as well spread more misery while you're temporarily staying here before heading home with your mum and dad?"

He grows more furious with every word, and having had enough I lift my wand and am a second away from wielding the worst hex I can think of directly at Malfoy's face, before someone grabs _me_ by the back of the robes and forces my wand hand down.

"Harry, this isn't the time," Hermione pants as she struggles to keep me barred. "I know you've had tons of stress very recently-"

"Oh, YES," I snarl, trying to jerk my arm free. "YES, fighting Voldemort, the DARKEST WIZARD OF ALL TIME, was certainly VERY STRESSFUL."

"-but you can't just start a fight in the middle of the Great Hall! The people staying here are recuperating from a WAR, Harry! They've seen much too many losses and I DOUBT they would be pleased to witness some more violence!"

I struggle against Hermione's surprisingly strong grip. "Getting rid of scum isn't _violent_. It's just a public service!"

Malfoy doesn't lower his wand as he glares at me. "What is this about, Potter? Feeling vengeful? Picking on random people now? Has the hero descended to a bully?"

"THE BOOKS, Malfoy! You know you put them there in my bag! One after the other after the other, every single day! So how do you do it, Malfoy? I know you went to a printer, but how did you find out every thought that was running through my head throughout all the scenes in the books?"

Hermione's hold slackens a little as she asks, "What are you_ talking_ about, Harry?"

"I'll tell you for the LAST TIME, Potter, I didn't make them! That's the same thing that happened to _me_! All last week, another book in the seven-part saga of _Harry Potter_" -he spits my name out- "would magically appear in my room! I tell you, we're all fic-"

After struggling for a second, he seems unable to say the word, and he compromises by finishing, "You know what you are, Potter." A tense moment passes, and then he sits down again at the table to finish his lunch.

Hermione follows me out of the Hall, relentlessly asking questions until I pointedly jog away from her.

At night, laying on the bed set aside for me at the window, I raise my hand. I wave it in front of my face. I pinch myself.

Over the past few days, another book just like the first would appear in my bag, until I had a grand collection of seven. Each one perfectly describing one year of my life, from my point-of-view.

Even though I never wrote anything or even _told anyone_ about what happened in the past seven years.

And on the back, each book has a brief summary and a few blurbs remarking upon the wonder of "J.K. Rowling's writing". With references to the "awards her novels have received".

I turn my head from side to side. I roll over onto my stomach.

I wonder if these movements have been planned.

I wonder if every thought I ever had was planned.

What if they were? What could I do? Moreover, _could_ I even do anything? Is my life already mapped out, my choices already made?

Then what does that mean? All the hardships I'd struggled through, all the battles I barely escaped, all the life-tearing decisions that faced me around every turn- do they not matter anymore? Was I always meant to win in the end? Did I just survive through a wizarding war not because of quick wit and sheer luck, but because someone had already planned it out that way?

The questions pile one on top of the other until I almost suffocate, and I sit up straight in bed, gasping.

No.

Malfoy's lying.

But.

His explanation makes sense- how else could I have been so fortunate as to survive through so many obstacles without the aid of someone more…omniscient?

I reach up to my forehead and touch the lightning bolt-shaped scar. Was it always meant to be there, from the very moment "J.K. Rowling" put quill to parchment? Could my story even possibly go any other way?

I stay sitting and listening to my breathing in the darkness, trying to concentrate. After the war I thought that _Malfoy_ of all people would be more humble, but he still remains acid as ever. Could he be...upset about something?

Perhaps his own non-existence?

_This is absurd_. It is such a far-fetched story, and yet I feel myself being carried away by it. A few moments after mulling over all this, I suddenly find myself angry with whoever this "J.K. Rowling" bloke is. How _dare_ he force me through years of adversity and difficulty, only in the end to reveal that I'm not even real, that what I had gone through didn't even really matter? Why did he have to kill off people I was close to, squeeze pain after pain after pain into my life when it all could've gone so differently? I could've had both parents living, I could've lived a normal life as a normal wizard boy, Voldemort would never even have had to exist!

I grow feverish imagining alternate lives for myself and feeding my hatred of J.K. Rowling. It's only after I grow so weary that I'm forced to close my eyes and drift off to a restless sleep that I realize how Draco Malfoy must feel at the moment.

Alone.

Invalidated.

Cheated.

And not mattering in the least.


	3. Chapter 3

Malfoy is sitting next to a castle window and staring out silently at the Hogwarts grounds below, arms wrapped around knees. He's acting more quiet than I've ever seen him in my life, but as soon as he hears my footsteps he quickly pushes himself up into a standing position.

"Potter," he says as soon as he spots me, narrowing his eyes. His hand snakes into his robes, but I raise both my arms, showing that I have no wand and don't intend to take one out.

"I think I believe you about being fictional," I say, a little softer than I intended to. I realize that this is akin to admitting Malfoy was right, which is as painful as it is appalling.

He doesn't draw his wand out, but his hand remains inside his robes. "Excellent, _Potter_. How long did that take you, a week? Yes, The Chosen One is indeed _wonderful in every way_."

I keep my hands up. "Look, Malfoy, I'm not here to verbally spar with you. I just want to know a few things."

It takes Malfoy a split-second to think of a suitable comeback, and I take advantage of the pause to continue. "Who is J.K. Rowling?"

Malfoy sneers. "How the hell should I know?"

Undeterred, I try a different route. "How long have you known, and why haven't you told the rest of the world the truth yet?"

"You idiot! You can't! It's impossible! I try to, but my throat constricts every time I try to tell someone else about the lie they've been living!"

"J.K. Rowling," I say immediately, snapping my fingers.

"_What?_"

"He must have thought of that. Fictional characters aren't actually supposed to know they're fictional, right? He must've restricted what we can do so we can't spoil the story." I brush back my hair and leave my hand on top of my head as I think. "But if he can do _that_, that must mean he intended for at least _us_ to find out-"

"A very comforting thought," Malfoy spits. He opens his mouth to say something else, but the slamming of a door behind me startles both of us.

I spin around to see a dark-haired girl in robes close the door I had just entered through and seal it with a Door-Locking Charm. When she turns to face us, I realize that I've never seen her before in my life, at Hogwarts or otherwise.

Malfoy gets over his shock more quickly than I do. "Who the _bloody hell_ are you?"

Glancing at each of us and taking us in, she starts to advance to the window. "Funny, Rupert Grint is well-known for saying that a lot in the movies." Her voice is soft-spoken, but it has a twinge of amusement in it.

Malfoy throws up his hands. "What the HELL are the 'movies'?!"

"It's a Muggle thing," I explain. Of course Malfoy has never heard of a movie. He grew up in a family of wizards, and it's only non-magical folk who partake in watching television and films.

The girl sits down at the window seat, facing us, and I get a full view of her face. She comes from Asian descent, and she looks slightly younger than my age, with a smattering of pimples across her skin. I'm completely certain that I have never seen her before anywhere, not even as a stranger in the street.

She stares at me for a minute, then remarks, "This is so weird."

Malfoy whips out his wand. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"Actually," she says, crossing her legs and nervously retying her ponytail, "after you figure it out I'm sure you'll want things from _me_. Information, specifically."

Malfoy waves his wand impatiently. "Yes, yes, very good, now throw out the vagueness and-"

"I know that you're fictional."

His wand arm drops limply to his side and he stumbles back a little. "How-"

"Wait." I step forward, watching the girl readjust her black robes. "You said 'you're'. You said '_you're_' fictional instead of '_we're_' fictional." All sorts of realizations start to rush into my brain at once. "Does that mean you're..." I struggle with trying to put my thoughts into words.

"I'm what?" she asks casually, taking out her ponytail and starting to retie it again.

"From...a different...world?"

"A different plane, yes. You can consider me from a different plane."

I'm suddenly confused. "...Plane? Do you mean 'airplane'?"

Malfoy, who was going a little cross-eyed trying to figure out what I've just realized, found a place in the conversation where he could join in. "Potter, what is an 'airplane'?"

The edges of her mouth droop a little, but the girl explains, "No, not an_ airplane_, a PLANE. Like in geometry class? You know, how lines and rays can exist in different _planes_, and two lines in different planes usually don't intersect because they're in two totally different dimensions?"

I stare confusedly at her, and out of the corner of my eye I can tell that Malfoy is doing the same.

"What is she talking about, Potter?" Malfoy asks me out of the corner of his mouth.

The girl's eyes suddenly go wide with comprehension, and she starts to giggle. "Oh! I keep forgetting! You're wizards! You haven't had a proper math lesson since you were eleven!"

"I can still do basic arithmetic," I insert crossly.

"What on Earth is _arithmetic_?!" Malfoy asks, hopelessly lost.

The girl on the windowsill attempts to disguise a laugh as a cough. "It's like magic," she rasps, "but you do it on paper, using your brain."

"Sounds like hell," Malfoy remarks.

She shudders. "Oh, it is. It certainly is."

My head whirls, but I try to get back to the girl's previous point. "Okay, okay, whatever, what were you saying about different airplanes?"

She rolls her eyes. "The word 'world' would work fine in this situation, too. Yes, I'm from an alternate world." She pauses, considering word choice. "I guess you'd _traditionally_ refer to me as 'real'."

Malfoy finally catches on to what we've been dancing around for the past few minutes, and his face whitens. "You're real? You exist?"

Her mouth twitches for a long time, as if she doesn't know exactly how to answer, but after a few minutes she finally answers, "Kind of."

I watch as Malfoy draws closer to her, growing more visibly excited by the second. "What deal are you offering us? I'll give you anything, I swear-"

A pulse now throbbing in her forehead, she crosses her arms. "I'm not offering either of you anything." Even before Malfoy's face has time to contort into a different expression, she adds, "I can't give you what you want, anyways. It's not in my power."

So many questions flood my head that I have no idea what to ask first, but after a second a vital one pops up in the front of my brain. "Are you...J.K. Rowling?" I whisper.

She shakes her head, smiling. "No, no, I _swear_ I'm not."

"Then who are you?" Malfoy snarls, trying to hide his disappointment from earlier. "Why are you here?"

She speaks it as if she's rehearsed it before coming here. "I'm Sierra. I live in a world where both of you are just characters in a book. I thought I'd drop in to…_clarify _a few things for you guys." She rearranges her sitting position.

A meaning-filled silence as Malfoy and I absorb this bizarre information, and then Malfoy runs his mouth again, because a silent Malfoy is like a friendly Voldemort- it just doesn't happen.

"Why?" Malfoy asks. "Why are we condemned to this stupid half-life when we could just as easily be living a real one?!"

She makes eye contact with him. "Define being real."

He sputters. "Define being...Being an _existent person_, you idiot! Actually _mattering_, not just thrown aside as not important enough! Having people care about me and give a damn about what happens to me, instead of being a…a _puppet_ in a fake universe!"

I still remain extremely confused and overwhelmed, but I manage to make one small remark. "For people to give a damn about you, you should actually start giving a damn about other people, Malfoy."

Malfoy starts to retort, but the girl cuts in. "You still matter."

He whips around to face her.

She taps her chin with her finger. "I suppose you haven't an idea, but the people in my world still care about the people in your world. You can't imagine the scale of it, actually. You and Hogwarts and Harry Potter and whether Lord Voldemort lives or dies still matter to us. They're pretty _real_ to us. We dress up in robes, we wave twigs and pretend they're wands-"

"Very well," Malfoy sneers. "But the people in _your_ world have the advantage of being real!"

She throws up her hands. "Stop using that word! What does 'real' even mean? When we read Harry Potter books, we cry over the deaths of characters we've grown attached to, we have hopes and fears as to what will happen to Harry next, we wonder over who is bad and who is good just as you do. We treat Hogwarts just as if it were a place we can travel to at any time, and in a way, it is. All your individual stories matter to us. They impact us. Is THAT 'real'?"

"BUT WE'RE PUPPETS!" Malfoy explodes. "We're forced to do whatever suits the author's fancy, do you have that problem?"

She looks at him, studying his face. "Have you ever done anything that felt against your will?" Malfoy opens his mouth, but she cuts across him. "No, think about it, have you ever started doing something and had no idea WHY you were doing it?

"No," I answer, stepping forward. "Everything I do feels like my own decisions. I've struggled over countless things, and the emotions and feelings were mine. My actions feel like the things I WANT to do."

"Exactly." She nods. "You will both find out that characters often belong very little to their creators." She smiles, as if she's had a secret experience with it. "A lot of the time they have minds of their own, and just pull their creators along for the ride."

Malfoy bursts out, "But there are plots, storylines, that are always meant to be carried out! Harry is always meant to defeat Lord Voldemort! _I_ am always meant to be the bad guy! That Hermione Granger girl," he spits, "is always meant to end up with that _Ron Weasley_-"

The girl shrugs. "Do you think it matters what the author intends? J.K. Rowling intends and intended lots of things, but do you think we fans care? Heck, we find other stories within the books! We pair different characters up in our minds, we think of all the other ways storylines could've gone, sometimes we blatantly ignore what the author has set out for us! You know," she adds as an afterthought, "as an example, some fans are perfectly convinced that you and Hermione would make a lovely couple."

I snort, but Malfoy's face flushes deeply before he quickly clears his throat. "That Mudblood? I can barely stand to _look_ at her, much less-"

"Lay off my friend," I snap.

His lip curls. "Of COURSE she's your friend, Potter, I've noticed you make buddies of the ugly and the insane-"

"Are you actually NICE to the people you like, or do you just act even nastier?" I don't think the remark through very deeply- it just slips out of my mouth- but Malfoy flushes again and says nothing.

Looking amused, the girl continues, "You'll both find that the choices you make are yours, regardless of author intentions. You aren't omnisciently _restricted_ from doing anything. Harry, you can go up to Professor McGonagall right now and start making out with her, and you'd be able to do it."

"THAT IS GOING A BIT TOO FAR," I exclaim, shuddering, but Malfoy doesn't hear the last sentence.

"That's impossible! I'm physically restrained from telling anyone else that they're fictional, I can only keep it between myself and Potter-"

"There are physical barriers, of which you have none-" she stands and stretches out her legs "-and then there are emotional barriers."

Malfoy is momentarily confounded, and she starts to walk toward the door. "Well, if that's all you two need to know-"

"NO!" we both shout out. Questions whirl through my head faster than ever. I speak the first couple I can think of, to prevent the girl from leaving before I get all the answers. "But what happens after the story ends? What happens to us and our world? Do we end? Do we start over from the beginning, with no recollection of having done it before? Do we keep on living?" From my bag, I pull out the book that details my last year fighting Voldemort. _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_. "Is this all there is to my story?"

"_Your_ story, Potter?" Malfoy asks snidely as the girl crosses the room to lift the book out of my hands. She looks at the cover, and then opens it and flips to the very last page, reading the last sentence ever written about me. She turns the page over.

"Hm," she says. "Interesting."

"What?" Malfoy and I demand.

She snaps the book closed and hands it back to me. "There's no epilogue in this edition."

"No…epilogue?" My mind races. "So you know what happens after this? There's more? What happens to me in the future, then? What do I do?"

"Forget about Potter, what do _I_ do?" Malfoy adds, reaching out and grabbing the sleeve of her robe.

She smiles, tugs away, and starts heading towards the door again. "I'm sorry, I can't tell you that."

"WAIT! STOP!" Malfoy shouts, lifting his wand arm again and pointing it straight at her.

She looks at it in disdain. "Malfoy, you git, you think you'll be able to threaten people into giving you what you want? Haven't you learned?"

Malfoy's arm droops a little, and the girl disappears through the door, slamming it shut behind her.

We both rush after her and yank it open again, but there's nothing left in the corridor at all.


	4. Chapter 4

Hermione slams her book closed and hands it across the lunch table to me. "Okay. I believe I memorized the exact measurements of the ingredients needed to make a sleeping potion. Test me."

Next to her, Ron rolls his eyes. "Hermione, give it a rest. We've just finished a massive war just a few weeks ago. Could you go a DAY without opening a book?"

She rolls her eyes back. "Think of what fighting in the war against Voldemort has done to our educations! We've missed an _entire year_ of wizarding school! I need to catch up on what I missed, or I'll NEVER be very successful!"

Ron points his spoon at me. "Harry, remind me why we hang out with Hermione Granger."

I point my own spoon back at him. "Because she does our homework for us."

"Ah, yes," Ron smirks as Hermione shoots him a look. "An excellent reason."

I listen to Hermione rustle the pages of her textbooks as I shovel food into my mouth, glad that Hogwarts is still offering free food and board for the survivors of the recent battle. A little down the table, Draco Malfoy sits alone, staring resolutely at his plate while he eats. His mother and father have gone to investigate the damage to their property and sort out legal matters, leaving him behind at Hogwarts to remain the sore thumb in a crowd of otherwise reasonably cheerful residents. Spearing the last bit of his meat and stuffing it in his mouth, he quickly stands up, throws his fork on top of his plate, and starts to walk down toward the door, passing the spot where we're all sitting.

After taking a sip of pumpkin juice, Hermione strokes the glass with one finger and says reflectively, "I've been thinking lately about how much we all don't matter."

The chunk of bread I was in the middle of swallowing gets caught in my throat and I start to cough. Behind Hermione, Malfoy stops dead.

While I cough some more and exert every effort to remove the piece of bread clogging my windpipe, Malfoy quickly approaches Hermione and grabs her shoulder. "WHAT did you just say?"

Ron jumps up, almost knocking over his plate. "Leave her alone, Malfoy," he snarls.

Malfoy snarls back and his grip tightens. "Have a problem with anyone except you touching your girlfriend?"

The tension mounts as they sneer at each other, but it's somewhat diluted by my continuous coughing. Eyes watering, I take a sip of pumpkin juice, but it doesn't help and just rushes back out the way it came.

Hermione joins the two in standing and shrugs off Malfoy's hand, making Malfoy's expression even darker, if that's possible. She turns to face him angrily. "Why do you even feel the need to butt in every conversation we ever have? What, surviving a war not good enough for you? Haven't ever learned how to be polite?"

Malfoy turns an interesting amount of colors in a short period of time. However, an extraordinarily loud hacking noise from me causes everyone to turn their heads in my direction.

"For Merlin's sake, Harry," Ron says, and he reaches across the table to thud me on the back. A few moments later, I blissfully spit a half-digested morsel of food into my napkin and wipe my mouth on my arm. As soon as I look somewhat capable of speaking again, Hermione immediately asks, "What is it, Harry? What did I say?"

"What DID you just say?" I gasp. "What do you mean?"

Did Hermione know too? What if there are more who know that we're all fictional? How many are destined to carry the secret?

She looked flustered. "I was just- I was just reflecting on some philosophical thought." I notice the astronomy textbook laying open next to her plate.

"Like?" Malfoy demands, while Ron's expression towards him is looking particularly murderous.

She turns, practically hissing. "It doesn't concern you, Malfoy."

"Maybe it does," he says. Slightly quieter, he adds, "More than you think."

She looks from him to me, and she throws up her hands. "I was just pointing out how much we don't matter, okay? I was just- I was just reading through the astronomy textbook about different planets and stars and such and I just realized how insignificant we all are." Despite her annoyance, she grows visibly more excited as she explains her ideas in that Hermione-ish way of hers. "I mean, we all think we and our problems matter, but do they really? We're each just one person on a planet populated by billions, in a universe so huge that some people think it goes on forever. We live for such a relatively short period of time, and then we leave existence forever. Who says we even matter? What's the relevance of this all-" she gestures around the Great Hall "-if it's all going to be gone in a million, a trillion years? Nothing lasts forever. We're all going to die sooner or later. And we're so little in the grand scheme of things." She trails off, apparently thinking over this.

Ron snorts and sits down on the bench again, but Malfoy remains uncharacteristically silent, staring at the side of Hermione's head.

So Hermione doesn't know the truth. How could she? She was just making a reflection on ourselves and the world, assuming that both actually exist. But as I digested her words, they rang uncomfortably true.

I thought being real, as opposed to being fictional, would make you matter.

But maybe, as it turns out, maybe it doesn't after all.

Maybe there's no way of mattering.

I'm barely conscious of saying the next sentence out loud.

"I want to matter." As soon as it leaves my lips, I feel heat rushing to my face. Such a stupid thing to say. Especially in front of Malfoy, who'll take any opportunity to make fun of me.

But he doesn't, continuing his long silence. He doesn't even look at me, but stares off into the distance, eyes unfocused.

Hermione sits back down and picks up her astronomy book, closing it carefully. "Don't we all? Everyone wants to be important. Relevant. Missed."

What Malfoy said the other day enters my head. _Having people care about me and give a damn about what happens to me._

I get dizzy contemplating everything I've ingested in the past few weeks.

Just as Hermione slips her book into her bag, Malfoy speaks up, still standing in the same spot for all this time. "We still matter."

Ron snorts derisively, scorning him and his opinion, but Malfoy ignores him. "Things matter because we say they matter," he says determinedly to the back of Hermione's head. A second fleets by, and his tone gets a shade softer. "_People_ matter because we say they matter." After getting no response, his grey eyes flick upward to meet mine for a second, and I realize two things.

Malfoy's been bitter lately because he's been thinking about someone.

And Malfoy also happens to be completely right.

He stands there indecisively for several moments, facing Ron's and Hermione's backs, and he twitches forward and backward a few times, as if unsure what he should do now. Finally, after getting no response from anyone, he starts to walk away, hesitantly at first and then breaking into a run, exiting the hall.

My mind whirls, and I hurriedly excuse myself from the table. I have all the pieces. Now I'm starting to put them together.

Outside the Great Hall, I excitedly pace down the hallway. Not to follow Malfoy- I have no idea where he went. I know I just need to keep moving, need to keep thinking.

Things matter because we say they matter. We take items, events, people, and we imbue them with meaning and declare that, yes, these things matter in our lives. How else can we try to make sense of a world in which maybe nothing matters at all? We're all fictional. And even if we weren't, like Hermione pointed out, we'd each still be just one person on a planet thousands of miles wide, in a universe so vast it can't even be measured. Who even gives a shit about any of us? "We live for such a relatively short period of time, and then we leave existence forever." Why even care if your parents die or if the person you love has eyes on someone else? It's so small in the scheme of things, so insignificant.

But it doesn't FEEL insignificant. It feels sharp. Acute. Real.

It hurts. It hurts because it matters to US. Despite the fact that in due time we and everyone we love will die and no one will remain to remember who we were, we still choose to care. We still choose to believe that things matter, even though maybe they don't. What's "real," anyways? How do you know YOU'RE real? Yes, you. Think about it. How do you know that you actually exist, by the definition of the word? What if you're just living an extended, detailed dream? You know how dreams are: they all feel pretty real when you're inside them. For all you know, YOU too can be nonexistent, a wisp of reality.

But does it even matter? If it turns out you don't exist, it doesn't stop you from feelings. It doesn't stop you from having hopes and dreams and fears, from making decisions that you regret and decisions that you love. I guess being fictional doesn't mean you're less "real" than others.

It's just existing, like the girl pointed out, in an alternate world.

Things that matter to us are real. And I say that my life, and Hogwarts, and Ron, and Hermione, and Ginny, and Professor Dumbledore and Snape and Sirius Black and Lupin and Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom and everyone and everything I've come into contact with in my life matter. They're real to me. And maybe that's all that counts.

As my old headmaster once said to me, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

My mind flashes back to that meeting a week ago, and the girl leaving before most of my questions were answered. _But what happens after the story ends? What happens to us and our world? Do we end? Do we start over from the beginning, with no recollection of having done it before? Do we keep on living?_

But now, without anyone telling me, I think I know the answer to my own question.

After the story ends, everyone still lives on. Because characters never belong entirely to their author. In short, I have a long, event-filled life ahead of me. Or maybe the rest of my life will turn out to be brief and boring. The girl's refusal to tell us about the epilogue was a refusal to let us know how our own stories will turn out. Giving us an opportunity to find out for ourselves.

And for some strange, inexplicable reason, I am suddenly cheered by the prospect of getting to have an unknown future laid out in front of me. Anything can happen. _I_ can do anything. My life can have all sorts of weird and beautiful twists, but I don't know them yet. Which increases the magic.

Pun intended.

My back straightens as I continue walking down the hall, and by the time I come across Luna Lovegood sitting against the wall with a parchment scroll in her lap, my greeting is so cheerful that it causes her to look up in surprise.

"Oh, hello Harry." She waves the polka-dotted quill she had been writing with in the air and smiles.

I grin back. "Hey, Luna. What're you doing?"

Her eyes unfocusing dreamily (as they usually do), she scratches the top of her quill along her chin and says distantly, "I'm writing a story, you know. About Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. Everyone thinks I made them up, but they're quite real, and I think they're rather fascinating to write and think about." She scribbles absent-mindedly on her parchment. "I was talking to my main character just now. Apparently, she doesn't do a thing I plan for her to do." She looks up at me and laughs airily. "She just pulls me along for the ride, really, isn't that right Rose?" Luna speaks fondly to her parchment as if it could answer.

Before I can say anything else, she looks up at me and sighs. "I suppose you think I've finally gone over the edge. Everyone else does, when I try to describe what I'm doing. But it's so hard to explain what it feels like to write a story, and it isn't _anything_ like you think it will be."

"Yeah," I interjected quickly. "Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about."

Luna's eyes widen in surprise and delight.

"Yeah." I nod confidently. "Hey, tell you what, I'm willing to read it after you're done."

Unexpectedly, Luna's eyes start to fill with tears of joy. "Oh, thank you Harry, you haven't an idea how much this story means to me!" Quivering with excitement and wiping her eyes, she bends over her parchment to start scribbling furiously, as if maybe she could finish it for me right now.

I lean down and kind of pat the top of her head. "Take your time, Luna, I can wait."

"Oh, I will!" she cries happily, and she's still scrawling madly when I leave her, completely immersed in her own made-up story.

Whether things are fictional or not really doesn't matter, does it?


	5. Chapter 5

I rifle through the pages one last time and toss the entire volume into the fireplace. Sparks shoot out onto the stone floor as _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ finally joins its six predecessors in a mass cremation.

I couldn't think of any other way to get rid of the whole lot of them without anyone else stumbling upon them. No one else can ever or should ever see them. In the end, being fictional barely even matters, because life will carry on anyways. Having someone accidentally stumble upon this secret would only cause them unnecessary pain and anguish as they go through what I had gone through, only to reach the same conclusion I had- fiction is still real.

And all of that pain is a fate I would never wish upon anyone.

Well, except maybe Draco Malfoy.

Too bad that already happened.

No sooner had I thought it than Malfoy's voice emanate from behind me. "Quite a hot day for a fire, Potter?"

Glancing over my shoulder to gauge whether Malfoy was in a murderous mood or not (I never can tell anymore), I saw him advance across the room to stop in front of the fireplace, staring in. His wand wasn't drawn, so I took it as a pretty good sign he did not have immediate plans to kill me.

Hands behind his back, Malfoy declares, "You're pretty slow, Potter." A pause, and then: "I got rid of _my _copies last week."

More silence follows, and we each weigh the secret that lies between us. But one look at Malfoy, and I know he would never have any intention of telling anybody else. Maybe it's because he wants to protect others in our world, or maybe it's because he still can't admit it out loud even to himself, but whatever the reason, we're both taking the truth to the grave, and that's the best situation I could ever hope for.

In the fire, _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ disintegrates on top of all the other previous books, and just as the cover starts to peel off Malfoy stiffly turns around to make eye contact with me. A second of hesitation passes before he curtly extends his hand.

I raise an eyebrow. "Malfoy, what are you planning?"

His lip curls back, and it looks as if he's maintaining every effort to keep his hand suspended where it is.

"So what _is_ this, Malfoy? Finally a recognition that I saved your life? An acknowledgement of the secret bond we now share? Really, Malfoy, I'd like an explanation after six years of traumatic childhood bullying." Although I can perfectly understand why he is offering peace, I still can't resist teasing him. You know, just a little.

"Potter," he squeezes out through gritted teeth. "Take. The damn. Hand."

I shrug, grinning, and reach out. We grasp for a second, and then we each let go as fast as we can.

Nice to know that at least some things don't change.

"Harry, there you are, I've been look-" Rushing into the room, Hermione suddenly stops as she spots the fireplace. Both Malfoy and I reel backwards from each other as fast as we can, but Hermione's entire concentration is within the flames.

A few more moments of examination, and then a note of hysteria is present as she whispers, "Are you...burning...books?"

"NO!" I shout, then realize I'm denying the obvious. "I mean, uh, _those_ books? We, I mean _I_, I found them in the library, and they're terrible! Completely, er, inaccurate! I don't know what happened to these books, but they must've undergone some kind of charm because nearly all the facts in them are, uh, _wrong_, and I was just trying to help out future generations of Hogwarts students..." My voice peters out as her look grows more and more skeptical.

Hermione looks from me to Malfoy, who has so far been busying himself by examining the fireplace mantel. "Then what's Malfoy doing here?"

"I just wanted to know why _Potter_ was having a fire in the middle of the summer," he coolly replies as he glances indifferently at her.

Hermione is quiet for a moment, reflecting. She places a finger on her chin. "I don't know _what's_ happening, but lately I've noticed you two have been acting...really, really strange," she observes.

"You have?" Malfoy demands a little too quickly, and then he coughs and turns back to the mantel. His voice instantly adopts a colder quality as he snaps without turning around, "Since when have you started noticing anything beyond your own bushy hair?"

Hermione flushes red. "I think saving Malfoy that night was a mistake," she mutters to me, and Malfoy's back stiffens. Tossing her hair, she remarks, "He hasn't changed a bit."

Malfoy whips around, and feeling the tension rapidly rising, I raise my voice.

"OY! Let's go find Ron and see what he's up to!" I tug at Hermione's arm, but she doesn't budge, standing there returning Malfoy's glare. At Ron's name, a corner of Malfoy's mouth starts twitching, and they both look about a second away from killing each other before Hermione turns to me and demands, "What were you two doing in here?"

"Oh, we were just enjoying each other's lovely company, I thought it was obvious," I say sarcastically, refreshing my attempt to drag Hermione out of the room.

She jerks her arm away again. "Honestly, Harry, I-" She struggles with articulating her thoughts and gives up after a few seconds of sputtering.

"Harry, I give up." She throws up her hands and storms out of the room. Malfoy's eyes flick after her as she leaves, maybe with a hint of something like regret in his face, but then he turns back to the fireplace and stares inside, unblinking.

I turn on Malfoy. "Brilliant, Malfoy. Simply _brilliant_. Just doing what you do best, starting arguments left and right, huh? Do you manage to mess up _everything_?"

He snarls the most viciously yet. "Shut up, Potter, you don't know what you're talking about."

"You _suck_ at expressing your feelings about anything, you know that?" I snap back. Malfoy presses his lips together tightly, and it feels good knowing that I'm bugging him.

Just getting back for all those years of torment, after all.

But he doesn't respond anymore, instead devoting all his attention to silently watching the flames in front of him. A minute passes, and just as I make a move to leave the room, shaking my head, Malfoy speaks up suddenly.

"They're gone," he says, and as I look down _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ crumbles to meaningless ashes in the fireplace.

No evidence left now.

Just us.

It's never occurred to me before, but I realize now that it wouldn't be far-fetched at all to hypothesize that after the books were burned, we would all be dead. Because, after all, isn't that where we exist? Where our whole world is?

But we aren't dead. Nothing's changed.

Because you know what? We don't just exist on the printed pages, or live only in the scenes we're allotted. We're so much more than that.

You can't get rid of us that easily.

Both of us are silent, watching the fire gradually diminish as it runs out of material to burn. Malfoy rubs his hands together, feeling the solidity of both of them.

Yup. Definitely still real.

"So what happens now, Potter?" he asks after a while, staring down into the flames.

Facing the charred remains of the books, I think of everything I've accomplished in the last seven years. Looking forward, I consider all the unknown things still waiting for me in the future. I think about Ron, and Hermione, and Ginny, and Luna, and all the other people waiting to eat lunch with me this afternoon in the Great Hall, and I feel an unexpected surge of affection for each and every one of them.

An unexpected surge of appreciation for the beauty of living, whatever "living" may mean.

I grin. "Life," I say to Malfoy. "Life happens next, because no way in _hell _does our story end here."

Still watching the fire, Malfoy gives a single nod. A second later, he abruptly turns and starts walking out of the room and down the hall to his left. The echoes of his footsteps float back to me, and after a couple more reluctant steps they rush faster, breaking out into a run.

"GRANGER!" he yells. There passes a long, hesitant pause before something else bursts forth from his diaphragm: "_HERMIONE!_"

I rush to stick my head out of the doorway, and way down the hall I can make out Hermione looking over her shoulder, utterly confused as Malfoy jogs toward her. Midway there he glances over his shoulder at me.

Not for long. Just for a split-second, and then he turns back.

I'm not an idiot. I know that life will march on, and Malfoy and I will inevitably separate ways, and this is probably the one and only time we'll ever even come close to sharing something important.

But for that one second, we're connected. And we can both tell.

Looks like the two of us are ready for whatever lies beyond the page.


End file.
